We are using the 9940B drives in a STK Powderhorn silo. We have 20 drives
shared between 2 TSM servers using the Gresham software.

As to the reliability, I've seen the same problems quoted by others.
However, these seem to dissipate with use, like a long painful burn in
period.

Right now we still average 2 stuck tapes per month in these drives. These
require a service call to have a tech come out and remove the tape.

The Gresham software seems solid with some nice utilities to help manage
the drives. You'll learn to love/hate the qlock_drive utility, as it shows
which drives are locked to which server. If the process that locked the
drive, expires ??, then you will have to manually issue unlock and dismount
commands.

Some additional maintenance but we have monitoring scripts that page us
when something happens.

Good Luck.

Gerald Michalak
630-691-4819
pager 800-759-8352 # 1076423
AIX - Certified Support Technician

"ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU> wrote on 03/01/2005
10:07:29 AM:

> Our management is asking us to look at converting our IBM 3592J to
> 9940B. (no comment)...  Most of our remote sites use 9940B drives
> with Netbackup, and in the past year we have seen many 9940b drives
> replaced (10 out of 40) in the past year, many tapes getting stuck
> etc...  I have heard from other people who use 9940b's and have good
> luck with them so I'm not sure if our 9940B issues are hdw or
> netbackup related.
>
> With that said I have a couple questions for those of you using
9940B's....
>
> 1) 9940B Drives using ACLS / Gersham Reliable?
>
> 2) Can we share a STK Silo with TSM and NBU. (Some of the thinking
> is to do DR for some remote sites that have 9940B's)
>
>
> Appreciate your input!
>
> Regards,
>
> Charles